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Title: Children of the Mind

Author: Orson Scott Card

LOC Call No.: PS3553.A655 C48

LOC Subjects:
Science fiction.

Additional Subjects:
Series -- Science Fiction -- "Ender"

Source: owned

Rating: If you have read the rest of the Ender series, you need to read this. You will enjoy it.

Readings: 1/10/97

While Kim and I were on vacation, we happened to be talking about crowd psychology while we were waiting to check in at the airport. Our conversation touched on Isaac Asimov because of his ideas about psychohistory. This caught the ear of the fellow ahead of us, who mentioned that he had once had dinner with Asimov as a teenager on the coattails of his parents. The conversation turned to favorite SF authors and I mentioned how much I enjoyed Orson Scott Card. "Oh, have you read his latest Ender book?" Huh!? A couple of days later in an airport bookstore, there it was. A couple of days after that, I had finished it.

Card wrote Xenocide (the third in the Ender series) in two halves apparently, with Children of the Mind being the second half. If you haven't read the rest of the series (Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide), this book will make no sense to you. If, on the other hand, you have read it, you must read this book to get resolution of dangling plot lines left in Xenocide.

I enjoyed this book a lot, but not as much as earlier ones. I was distracted throughout the first third or so by the intrusion of thinly disguised Mormon theology in several places. As usual, Card kept several plot lines running at once. The one I enjoyed the most was that involving Peter/Ender and Wang-mu on the planet Divine Wind (which is to Japan as the planet Path is to China). Here Card explored some fascinating ideas of how large actions are often influenced by seemingly unrelated things.


Page created 1/16/97.
Last updated 03/17/03 at 14:33.

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